A four-hour concert featuring piano music by Debussy might seem like an excessive ask, but the Perth Festival filled the venue for this stunning and highly entertaining concert by French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet.

Like Sibelius, Florent Schmitt was another composer of great longevity. This concert saw an opportunity to hear his Symphony No. 2 paired with Sibelius' Symphony No. 3, with two piano pieces by Ravel and Franck in the middle.

Games of various types pirouetted in and out of Les Siècles' Gallic programme last night, from Debussy's play of the waves in La Mer to the shenanigans of a distinctly adult game of tennis in his ballet Jeux.

Vladimir Jurowski built on the Cleveland Orchestra’s existing mastery of Debussy, along with a virtuosic performance by Jean-Efflam Bavouzet of Ravel’s G major piano concerto, and a recent work by Marc-André Dalbavie.

Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Philharmonia received the largest ovation I have seen for a visiting orchestra in Manchester, delighting the Bridgewater Hall with works by Sibelius, Rachmaninov and Tchaikovsky.

Prom 30 saw the return of the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra under its Conductor Laureate Gianandrea Noseda with a Russian-themed programme. Prokofiev, Borodin and Tchaikovsky were played alongside Edward Cowie’s BBC commission and world première Earth Music I – The Great Barrier Reef.

My last encounter with conductor Susanna Mälkki was her debut with the Los Angeles Philharmonic two and a half years ago. I was impressed with her crisp style of conducting that delivered near-seismic impact in Richard Strauss’ Also Sprach Zarathustra.

Although this was ostensibly a recital featuring the music of two composers, a third, much less venerable one, also managed to leave his mark on proceedings. The figure in question is Carl Czerny, the one-time pupil of Beethoven’s whose banal piano studies proved to be the springboard for the first of Claude Debussy’s own, far more inventive forays into the genre.

There is nothing quite like an all-Beethoven programme for filling a large concert hall. Last night’s offering from the RSNO in Edinburgh’s Usher Hall was ample proof of this, with hardly a spare seat anywhere in the house.

Judging by this evening’s performance, the future of music-making in Birmingham is in safe hands. Following an intensive half-term week’s training, including sectional coaching by musicians from the parent orchestra, 100 eager and accomplished 14- to 21-year-olds brought the Symphony Hall stage to life.

Continuing with Sibelius, the Sydney Symphony presented another Finnish epic in their latest concert, this time Sibelius’ Kullervo Symphony. However, first of all we were treated to a Ravel masterpiece, his Piano Concerto in D for the left hand.This concerto was commissioned by the pianist Paul Wittgenstein, who had lost his right arm in World War I.

Kent Nagano took to the stage tonight, microphone in hand, slowly becoming encircled by a forest of empty music stands, 50 in all. It is only natural to provide a word of explanation for a concert which contained Ligeti’s Fluxus piece Poème symphonique, scored for 100 metronomes, and Reich’s Clapping Music, amidst more standard works.

New York’s Mostly Mozart Festival continued Friday evening with three works, all marvelous and presented in reverse-chronological order. After Witold Lutosławski’s Muzyka żałobna, the orchestra and conductor Louis Langrée were joined by French pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet for Bartók’s Piano Concerto no. 3, and the concert concluded with Mozart’s Symphony no. 39 in E flat major.

To perform so many of Debussy’s works in one sitting requires a certain amount of skill and understanding. The charismatic pianist Jean-Efflam Bavouzet opened our eyes to the impressionistic world of Claude Debussy in this special three-part concert for the Cheltenham Music Festival.

In a neat piece of programming, Monday’s Wigmore Hall lunchtime concert brought together two French master-pianists to play two French masterpieces for the ballet, Debussy’s Jeux and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, both transcribed for two pianos.The works are, in fact, old friends, and were both introduced to the world by the Ballets Russes, in 1913.

Listening to an orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall is a bit like watching a gladiatorial contest between the orchestra and the hall. If the orchestra prevails, the sound comes through clean and well-defined. If not, the hall's giant size and booming acoustic turn the results to mush.